Ethics and Objectivity

The issue of ethics and agencies is a broad oneGroupM39s initiative is based around the notion that using certain data in certain circumstances to do certain things can be unethical No one39s going to contradict that Indeed some like Jerry Daykin from Glaxo SmithKline have been saying much the same thing for a whileWhat GroupM has done is develop and formalize the thought creating a tool that can be used to help guide their plannersIn other words they39ve rather elegantly created a tool that helps them decide whether or not it39s ethical to use a toolThe Campaign piece states that quotGroupM has been training its agencies and has identified champions at each firm to begin rolling out the tool to different teamsquotGroupM is moving to operationalize ethical considerations when using datasets which is smartMaybe the role of these local quotethics tool championsquotamp160could usefully be expanded from the external to the internalWith the media themselves and how they39re evaluated offering opportunities for investment and innovation where should the boundaries be drawn between buyer and sellerFor example how should media agencies behave when their parent invests in a global partnership with a media platform as WPP did with TikTok earlier this week and both Publicis and IPG have done in the pastThe headline on the WPP TikTok collaboration prioritised brand safety something we can all agree is aamp160good thingThe copy though makes clear this goes deeper The partnership is quotfocused on developing new ad products on the videosharing platform while bolstering its brandsafety measuresquotAt a corporate level this makes sense TikTok is clearly hugely successful WPP have clients who may well value new ways of using the platformThe question is How to remain objective and avoid an overzealous use of the platformHow about Finecast the addressable ad business quotFinecast enables advertisers to precisiontarget viewers across multiple ondemand linear and live streaming TV environmentsquotamp160This from the WPP annual report Finecast is a GroupM companyAgain no one will argue that a technology that offers advertisers the option to improve how they target TV messages is a bad thing but any internal pressure from above on planners to use addressable TV repackaged and sold by a sister company would be unethicalRemember how agencies screamed and shouted about conditional sellingThe media agency world is full of examples of clients being pushed towards a medium a platform a technology for no other reason than the agency in question either owns or has a mutually beneficial financial arrangement with the vendorThis detail usually escapes mention to the clientThe Cog Blog has covered the linked issues of a lack of transparency and the threat to objectivity so often it39s becoming monotonousFortunately others are on the case too Scott Moorhead39s Aperto Partnership wrote an excellent white paper on the topic just last monthAs they put it quotThere are no circumstances under which a media agency should sell advertising space to their clientsquotThen there39s this white paperamp160From Transparency to Neutralityamp160It39s well worth downloading from the7stars39 websiteTricky blighters ethics Do the best for the clientamp160the rest will look after itselfDisclosure BJampampA has done work for the7stars the agency mentioned aboveClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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Ethics and Objectivity

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Brian Jacobs

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